What question did this study set out to answer?

The goal is to articulate Spinoza’s concept of expansive necessitarianism and its implications for modality.

June 28, 2026

Spinoza’s expansive necessitarianism

Key Points

The goal is to articulate Spinoza’s concept of expansive necessitarianism and its implications for modality.
Developed three key constraints based on Spinoza's philosophy: ontological exhaustiveness, complexity of natural laws, and denial of a physical vacuum.
Contrasted expansive necessitarianism with restrictive necessitarianism using Spinoza's texts.
Identified that the unique arrangement of finite modes is determined by Spinoza's constraints.
Argued that plenitude alone does not clarify the necessity of particular configurations of modes.

Abstract

This paper argues that Spinoza is best understood as a necessitarian of a particularly radical kind: one who holds not only that the possible and the actual are coextensive, but further that the domain of actuality is as broad as the domain of conceivability. I call this view ‘expansive necessitarianism’ and contrast it with the more familiar ‘restrictive necessitarianism’. However, while EIp16 and related texts support a plenitudinous ontology, plenitude alone does not explain why the system of finite modes must take on the unique arrangement that it does. In this paper, I develop three Spinozistic constraints that sharply narrow the apparent possibility space: (i) the requirement that the series of finite modes is ontologically exhaustive, (ii) the infinite complexity of the laws of nature, and (iii) the universal causal integration entailed by Spinoza’s denial of the possibility of a physical vacuum. Together, these constraints eliminate all but one possible arrangement of finite modes, and Spinoza’s necessitarianism emerges as a distinctive and hitherto underappreciated metaphysics of modality.

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